TWO DIE IN DODGE CHALLENGER HELLCAT CRASH

by Tracy Renck Tue, 2017-09-12 14:30

Two friends, who were test driving a Dodge Challenger Hellcat at the Central Colorado Regional Airport in Buena Vista, Colo., Sept. 8, both died in a high-speed crash when their car sped off the end of the runway and across a ravine.

The men had permission to use the runway, Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze said in an article posted in the Denver Post Sept. 11. They likely were driving faster than 100 miles per hour before their tragic wreck.

“They were just test driving this car,” Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze told the paper. “They went a little too fast. I don’t want to surmise. … They probably got to the end of the runway and, at that speed, didn’t realize they were there so fast. And they lost control. It was just too high a speed and they got to the end of the runway.”

According to the Denver Post article, the 2016 Challenger Hellcat driven southbound down the runway Sept. 8 by Lynd Fitzgerald, age 71, of Colorado Springs, Colo., with Roger Lichtenberger, 76, of San Marcos, Calif., in the passenger seat kept moving off the runway for another 314 feet, sheriff’s investigators found.

Then it went through the air over a ravine before hitting the ground. The car bounced back into the air again, flipped end over end over a second ravine, and landed on its wheels, the investigators determined.

Chaffee County Sheriff’s deputies, Buena Vista police and Colorado State Patrol troopers raced to the scene. They found the wrecked car 650 feet beyond the south end of the runway. Both men were pronounced dead at the scene.

Spezze said he believed Fitzgerald was simply going too fast and misjudged how much room he had left on the runway.